From the Head of School: World Events & Events in our World

What a result! Our Robotics team has earned a spot in the VEX World Robotics Tournament in Dallas, Texas. This was quite a feat by the underdog seventh seed, and entailed incredible sportsmanship, ingenuity, and great teamwork. Read more at this link.

Our collective attention has been on the war in the Ukraine. Last week as part of Friday’s Community Meeting, members of our community provided excellent background on the history of the region, the founding of NATO and a good lesson on the central position that Ukraine occupies in Europe. Many LA students and employees have connections to this region of the world, and I expect there will be more opportunities to get involved and to support Ukrainians in the future.

Tomorrow, we begin our transition to a different stage of going to school in this pandemic.  Nearly two years have passed, and tomorrow we will welcome students and employees to make the choice of when and where to wear masks here on campus. As I said to our students in Community Meeting last week, this is a very important step for our community and one that will be met with mixed feelings and emotions.

I want to emphasize that mask optional means making a personal choice. There are many reasons I will wear a mask:

  • When I know I am going to visit older people in our community
  • When I make a trip home to see my parents
  • When I am anticipating an important event that I don’t want to risk missing if I become sick
  • When I am asked by any of you to do so when meeting with me
  • While we are not done with this pandemic, we are moving into a phase where we will have more individual choice in how we navigate it. This freedom of choice brings the responsibility to choose well and to honor one another’s choices. As we work toward becoming the inclusive and welcoming community we want to be, our move to mask optional is a perfect chance for us to welcome and respect diversity of thought, experience, and personal choices.

I will close by saying I am excited as we find ourselves without the masks, literal and figurative that have been so present during this pandemic, to welcome each other’s smiles and take the opportunity to fully see one another here at Lincoln Academy.

Be well and stay safe,


Jeffrey S. Burroughs
Head of School